CA asked to nullify oath-taking of new nurses

Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO) chairman Dante Ang asked the Court of Appeals (CA) to nullify the oath-taking of new nurses who passed the nurses licensure examination given by the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) last June.

In a five-page petition for intervention filed through his lawyer, Eddie Tamondong, Ang asked the CA to order a new examination for Tests III and V of the 2006 nursing examination, which was allegedly tainted with "fraud."

The CFO is the lead agency of the Presidential Task Force on the National Licensure Examination for Nurses in the Philippines created by President Arroyo through Executive Order no. 550 on July 31.

"Considering that a leakage in Test III (medical/surgical nursing) and Test V (neuro-psychiatric nursing) has been established to have occurred in the June 11 and 12, 2006 nursing examination given and conducted by the respondents, the results... are tainted with fraud and cannot be a valid basis for determining who passed and did not pass the examination and for the administration of oath for those who supposedly passed," Ang said in his petition to the CA.

Ang said the "timid resolution of the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) and the Nursing Board (NB) does not purge the entire examination of the taint that tarred it, nor does it restore the integrity of the whole test, much less does it redeem the tarnished reputation of the country the world over as the source of professionally competent nurses."

He said the PRC’s decision allowing the new nurses, most of whom come from the provinces, to take their oath "was evidently to preempt, as it were, all other official acts and render moot whatever findings and recommendations they may come up with."

"The proclamation and publication by the respondents of the names of the examinees who have purportedly passed the June 2006 nursing test was without legitimate basis and therefore invalid," he added. "Invalid as well for the same reason are the oaths administered or caused to be administered by the respondent PRC on the examinees it considered to have passed the subject examination."

The CA earlier issued a 60-day temporary restraining order (TRO) stopping the new nurses from taking their oaths, but the PRC allowed them to do so.

Meanwhile, examination passers in the leakage-tainted nursing licensure test bonded into an alliance and launched a signature campaign to demand that the perpetrators of the irregularity be prosecuted without sacrificing them.

Renato Aquino, head of the Alliance of New Nurses, said that those who passed the nursing licensure exam decided to join forces because they are being sacrificed by some sectors that are calling for a retake of Tests III and V.

"This is an informal group but we felt we have to join forces so that our voices will be heard. We are the victims here but we are the ones being prosecuted," he told The STAR.

The alliance intends to collect the signatures of the examinees who passed the licensure test and submit the list to Malacañang, the Senate, House of Representatives and other pertinent bodies concerned with the nursing profession.

"We are trying to reach out to those in the provinces through the friends of our friends... We are definitely against a retake," Aquino said. "It is unfair for us to undergo sleepless nights prior to and after the exam just to satisfy the request of a few."

The PRC is with the passing examinees in their "no retake" stand, as it assured that the leaked questions were excluded from the test. — Jose Rodel Clapano, Sheila Crisostomo